The End in Sight

In an era of mainstreaming, the future looks uncertain for a
respected school for the blind in Wisconsin.

Janesville, Wis.

Just inside the school's front door are the trophies. Rows and rows
of them, enclosed in a glass case, won at swimming, track, wrestling,
and cheerleading meets. Trophies of sleek, golden athletes, posing with
bravado on stands embossed with the school's name:

The Wisconsin School for the Visually Handicapped.

"If I were in a regular public school, I'd never get to be on the
track team," says 13-year-old Abby Swatek, who is legally blind yet
placed second in the 600-meter in an interstate competition last year.
She smiles through her braces.

"Oh man, it was awesome having all the people cheer you on," she
recalls.

The K-12 school's fervent commitment to physical
education--evidenced by its indoor track and four-lane pool--is one of
many ways it offers blind students opportunities they might not find in
regular public schools. Managed and financed by the Wisconsin
Department of Public Instruction, the school about 80 miles southwest
of Milwaukee enrolls visually impaired children from across this mostly
rural state.

But after nearly a century and a half of teaching everything from
fractions to grocery shopping, this vestige of a fading tradition in
educating the blind may soon close its doors.

State officials say it's for the best.

State Superintendent John T. Benson and Republican Gov. Tommy G.
Thompson have recommended the school's closing, pointing to reasons of
both economics and special education policy.

They cite spiraling costs, largely because of an all-time low
enrollment. The school still has to heat its 10 buildings, for example,
whether they house 61 students, as they do now, or 183 students, as
they did during the school's peak enrollment in 1967.

This year, the state will spend more than $70,000 to educate, house,
and feed each student at the school. In contrast, the state spends
about $20,000 for each blind student enrolled in her or his home
district.

"Clearly, the most cost-effective way is for the district to provide
its own services," says Paul Halverson, the state's director of
exceptional education.

Special education policy also points in that direction. Since 1975,
when a federal law on educating disabled children was passed, federal
and state officials have encouraged schools to place disabled children
in regular classes as much as possible. Advocates of "mainstreaming" or
"inclusion" argue that youngsters with disabilities need to learn how
to survive in a regular environment, and that other children need to
learn how to get along in a diverse environment.

"If children with visual disabilities are to learn how to function
in a sighted world, they need to be educated in a sighted world and be
surrounded by people who represent society's makeup," Halverson
says.

State officials say closing the Janesville school will allow them to
spread $3.6 million, about half of the school's budget, among the
students' home districts to beef up their special education programs.
The rest of the budget would be used to pay for a summer school
program, expand outreach services, and produce Braille and large-print
books.

From Monday through Friday, most students here sleep in one of two
dormitories on the campus, a collection of squat, tan-brick buildings
built in the 1950s and 1960s. Janesville, the surrounding community, is
a working-class town, population 58,000, where the biggest employer is
a General Motors plant. The school's students go home by car, bus, and
even airplane on the weekends, at the expense of their local
districts.

"We'd rather allow kids to stay with their families," says Greg
Doyle, the spokesman for the state education department. "We're pretty
strong proponents of placing children in the least restrictive
environment. This facility is the most restrictive."

Doyle's comment refers to the federal Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act that stipulates that children with disabilities are
entitled to a free, appropriate public education in the least
restrictive environment.

State officials say such an environment is possible for the school's
students outside of Janesville, insisting that they are no more
disabled than the 1,100 visually impaired students now enrolled in
their home districts. And proponents of the closing note that most of
the school's students come from the southeastern and most populated
part of the state, which has the most special education resources.

"The facility has outlived its usefulness," Doyle says. "We believe
we can provide comparable services and better spend the money on
existing programs or new ones."

But even he acknowledges that the quality of services for visually
impaired students varies from district to district, depending on size,
resources, and individual teachers' and administrators' commitment to
special education. Here, one-third of the staff has been at the school
for at least 20 years, and all the teachers have certificates in
working with visually impaired children. Class sizes for academic
subjects range from two to seven students.

"Are students likely to find themselves in situations where they are
getting less individual attention? I suppose that's possible," Doyle
says.

Children with vision and hearing problems were the first disabled
students to receive specialized education programs. The nation's first
state-run school for blind children opened in Ohio in 1837. The
Wisconsin school opened 12 years later.

Today, there are roughly 45 schools in the country that focus on
education for the blind, the vast majority of which are supported by
tax dollars, according to a recent study by the Association for
Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired, based
in Alexandria, Va.

Denise Rozell, the association's executive director, says it is
important to remember legal mandates for educating children with
disabilities.

"Federal law says every child is supposed to get what every child
needs," Rozell says. "Without knowing the [Wisconsin] kids, I'm sure
some of them are in the school because their local districts could not
serve them appropriately. Children with disabilities are individuals,
and each is entitled to an individualized education program."

Michael J. Bina, the superintendent at the Indiana School for the
Blind in Indianapolis and a former teacher at the Janesville, Wis.,
school, says it's one of the best. "It's like going to the Mayo
Clinic," he says.

But these specialized schools educate only about 7 percent of blind
students, a small fraction of their share of such students 50 years
ago. The vast majority of visually impaired children attend schools
near their homes, where they may spend part of the day in regular
classes and the rest of the day in special education.

As a result, many specialized schools are struggling to maintain
funding and enrollment. For example, Nebraska's School for the Deaf,
located in Omaha, has seen its enrollment plunge from 200 to 31
students and is also slated to close this year.

Today, there are roughly 45 schools in the country that focus on
education for the blind, the vast majority of which are supported
by tax dollars.

Compounding the challenges of educating the blind is a nationwide
shortage of trained teachers, partly due to the low incidence of
blindness in comparison to more common speech and learning
disabilities. Wisconsin does not even have a teacher training program
in visual impairment.

"I'm worried about how Wisconsin is going to meet the needs of blind
children, who, in addition to developing literacy and academic skills,
need help with daily living skills," says Donna L. McNear, president of
the visual impairment division of the Council for Exceptional Children,
a professional organization based in Reston, Va.

Tom Hanson is one of the 10 teachers at the school with visual
disabilities of their own. They make up one-tenth of the staff and
serve as powerful role models for the blind students, several of whom
mentioned that they'd like to work at the school someday.

The 52-year-old vocational educational teacher points out the
school's unusual sights and sounds: a Braille dictionary that takes up
72 thick volumes; the tap-tap-tap of white canes up and down the halls
after the bell rings; a tape-recorded voice telling the story of Paul
Bunyan for transfer to a large-print or Braille book.

The school boasts technology that can translate printed material to
Braille, and vice versa. Those programs are particularly useful in
cases where large-print and Braille textbooks--which can cost as much
as $1,000--are not widely available. Some children carry small
computers to class that allow them to take notes in Braille and even
draw graphs.

On a recent tour of the school, Hanson stops in an ungraded
classroom for children with multiple disabilities, including cerebral
palsy, cognitive disorders, and speech impairments. "I'm not sure the
local school districts can duplicate what they have here," he says.

Twelve-year-old Josh Beder presses his thick glasses against a
keyboard in order to distinguish letters. "This is Sssssssssimon," says
the friendly boy, introducing the computer. A computer-synthesized
voice says, "sail" and an image of a sail appears on the screen. The
voice sounds out each letter of the word as Josh types it in: phonics
for the blind.

Alexis Horne, a 10-year-old quadriplegic, learns to form sentences
with a special keyboard that has large buttons, one word on each. "The
... girl ... can ... run," she types with difficulty. A Winnie-the-Pooh
backpack is strapped to her wheelchair.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.

Get more stories and free e-newsletters!

This story incorrectly states that Gov. Tommy G. Thompson had recommended the closing of the Wisconsin School for the Visually Handicapped. The governor has not taken a public position on the proposed closing.